Here's what really happened.

The Complete Communication Skills Master Class for Life Customer Communication Skills For Your Consumer Life
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Transcript

So I hope you had a chance to look at that video. Is there anything special about other special effects? No, it's just like this. It's just me talking. And it took me five minutes. I did it in one tick.

But what's the result? I posted it. I think about a day went by all of a sudden I'm getting calls from the local manager, the local managers boss, the head of public relations, people in corporate from many states away. I'm getting calls on the weekends, and that was anything we can do for you, Mr. Walker, can we give you more can we give you more money? I wasn't trying to shake them down. I wasn't trying to extort them.

I just wanted to be treated fairly. All I wanted was a refund for the $70 gift and I got it and had got it like that. It wasn't some six week process. If they want to give it to you right away. They can here's why. I think really half of their goal was, oh my gosh, this guy is causing a problem because he makes us look bad.

He's embarrassing us. How can we shut him up? Because this could blow up on social media. Now, it didn't blow up on social media. It was only seen by a couple of dozen people and most of those were probably executives at sprint. So let's back up a minute and walk through my thought process.

My thought process was any reasonable person who heard my side of this story how I was sold a case, it was the wrong case, wrong piece of equipment, I should get a refund would agree with me. So I concluded that I really was on the right side of things a fair minded person would conclude I deserve a refund. So the way I positioned the video is I'm thinking about not How can I really communicate with sprint? But how can I communicate with other people consumers who watched the video thinking this guy seems reasonable Wow, Sprint's really awful maybe we shouldn't do business with them. So I don't want to make it sound so complicated like, Oh, it's three dimensional chess. But it is a little more communicative complicated than nice simply communicating with the sprint executives or the local manager because I am trying to communicate with the people they care about their customers.

And the fear of looking bad with their customers, I think is what would motivate them to really take a second look at my particular case, and in this case, do the right thing and just give me the $70 refund. They probably would have given me $500 as a way of making up for the inconvenience. I didn't ask for that. And I'm not asking you to use this communications tactic to shake down corporations or governments. I want you to use it as a tool to just help level the playing field and to help you communicate more effectively. So more specific things I did, I put on a suit and tie.

I do believe it's just harder for businesses to discount someone who looks like a respectable businessman. And I realized there can be sexist and racist element classes elements in that. But I did what I thought worked for me, I happen to be an old man who own suits and can look respectable. So I put a suit and tie on so I wanted to look the part of someone who is a good customer. Notice how I started off in a completely positive way. I stressed I had nothing but good dealings with your company.

I'm a reasonable person. I actually said that. I tell them I've given their customer their business thousands of dollars over the years which is true and they have that in the records. Here's the thing that most people forget. I tell them, I want to be able to give them more business in the future. Now, assuming for a minute that I was wrong in this situation, I don't think that a lot.

I just think a fair minded business would say, here's a customer that's given us thousands of dollars of business in the past gives us business every year gives us business every month through the the sprint service agreement is likely to give us thousands of dollars more, even if we think he's wrong. Let's give him the 70 bucks back just to placate him. Again, I'm thinking right, but I'm hoping they're at least in the worst possible scenario, looking at it from that perspective. So I'm incredibly positive. I'm not cursing, I'm not angry. I'm not impugning anyone's modus ponens stating my case, in a straightforward way.

Again, all of this Because I want the PR people, the managers, the managers boss to be thinking, Oh my gosh, he's making us look like idiots because he seems so reasonable. Most people when they complain, I'm sure you've seen people at the airport. There's bad weather a plane is delayed and some passenger wants to scream at the hapless person behind the ticket counter. And it's not that person's fault that it's raining or there's a windstorm. You don't want to seem like that. That's embarrassing for everyone involved.

And let's face it when we hear I know when I hear someone yelling at a clerk. It makes me want the clerk to say no go away and you're not getting any refund. I want to be the opposite of that. And when you're trying to communicate with a big company, I think you need to be the opposite of that. low key, low energy but calm With confidence, state your case, and almost with a tone of a bewilderment of gosh, I've been a good customer, I want to be a good customer. I don't understand why I'm being treated so poorly.

And what you'll find is, people will jump through hoops because they don't want a reasonable person to look at that and think, Wow, they really are treating their customers poorly. Other issues involve the distribution. I didn't just email that to the manager. I called up and asked for the managers boss, got that person's email. And then I just went to the sprint website, looked at the press section and pulled an email address off of a press release. And I think I found the section on the head of the press office and Investor Relations.

So I sent the email out, four or five different places, ceasing everyone so everyone saw what everyone else saw. This actually went out on a late Friday or Saturday. So I'm getting calls from people in corporate headquarters on a Sunday afternoon they're having to come into the office. Now I feel bad a little bit ruining people's weekends, but I feel a little bad. I had to go to the store and call several times and get no attention. So this is a tactic that I believe is extraordinarily effective.

When you are in the right. You can't lie You can't make up enjoy at least I don't believe you should. And state your case calmly. Make a nice video. Anyone can write a nasty Yelp review. Which by the way, I think I did that too.

Oh, the other thing I posted this video on the sprint Facebook page. So you can just imagine all the different buttons it's pushing. By the way. I did all this in about a half an hour. This is so much easier, faster. quicker than, you know, threatening a lawsuit and writing regular letters.

It's quick and it's easy. So to sum up Corporation, big government agency, anyone who has to deal with a large group of public has done you wrong. State your case. Any video is more powerful than just a text comment. And then distribute that video on YouTube. Twitter.

Yeah, I put it on there. I put it to their attention on their Twitter account too. You hit them on all their social media contacts and you email it to them, you will get their attention, you will communicate your message. So I hope you have nothing but good dealings with all your corporate purchases. But if not use this technique. Very few people are doing it.

That's why it works. Part of any great communication doing something A little bit different from what everyone else does. It cuts through the clutter.

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